Travel Tips

I was kayaking through the mangroves outside the Royal Phuket Marina on a mission to find jellyfish. When I first saw this specimen floating on top of the water, I wasn't sure if it was natural or man-made. The "fronds" appeared to be frayed nylon and the flat disc in the centre reminded me of a slice of a gemstone. I showed my hubby and he thought it was a coin or flake of metal with a growth on it.

Porpitae is a Hydrozoan, part of a group called Chondrophore. This "animal" is actually a colony.

Wikipedia - Porpitidae

Actually, I'm not sure whether I caught two different jellyfish of the same species, but this picture is the underside of the above specimen, the second Porpitae I caught about a mile south of Racha Noi Island off the coast of Phuket. The underside of this more blue coloured Porpitae had the beige polyps of a more uniform size with an obvious mouth in the centre. The underside of the more green coloured one - below (which I caught in the mangroves) had white polyps.

This is the picture of the jellyfish in the jar of formalin, but the picture below is what it looks like when swimming.
I'm a bit confused on the name of this one, so will get Dr Somchai to confirm it for me.

This is the jellyfish which washed up on Patong Beach in 2009. The Cephea Cephea is an edible species of jellyfish with minimal sting.

Thai News Cephea Cephea

These jellyfish were almost invisible in the water, as you can see in the picture below. They only appeared slightly coloured once I put them into this old bowl. They turned brown coloured when I auto-corrected the picture. It's unfortunate that I didn't put them into a different coloured container to take the photos.

We had some people diving off the boat where I caught these jellyfish - about 1 mile south of Racha Noi. They said they sting.